The strategic acquisition of an AI-Powered, Web3 platform and its assets will accelerate MetaWorks' vision to extend fan and user engagement into movies, music, education, and more.

MetaWorks Platforms, Inc. “MetaWorks'' or the “Company”, CSE: MWRK and OTCQB: MWRK, an award-winning Web3 company that owns and operates platforms in the entertainment & technology space, is pleased to announce that it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire the Metaverse platform and AI Avatar assets of Apex VR Holdings, Inc., the parent company of the UtopiaVR.com Metaverse Platform.

The agreement marks a significant milestone for MetaWorks as it seeks to strengthen its position in the rapidly evolving Web3 space. Under the terms of the agreement, MetaWorks will acquire the assets of UtopiaVR, including its Web3 business metaverse platform, Chat GPT-powered AI avatar technology, and domain portfolio, including UtopiaVR.com. The agreement also includes a patent-pending IP technology relating to metaverse haptics that will hold potential for future development and licensing opportunities.

MetaWorks will seek to expand on UtopiaVR’s GPT (Generative Pre-trained Transformer) AI-powered avatars and metaverse environments to create immersive experiences in film, music, and education. The acquisition would extend MetaWorks' capabilities in many areas, most notably in the film space. Upon closing the Company will immediately begin building new metaverse experiences for the recently acquired Web3 and NFT movie assets for the upcoming film, The Skulleton, and for the first full-length NFT feature film ever released, Zero Contact.

MetaWorks Platforms, Inc. President Scott Gallagher commented on today's news, “We plan to finalize the closing of this transaction in the next week. The acquisition of UtopiaVR represents a major leap forward for our company and our platform. This transaction is completely in line with our belief that for metaverse platforms and Web3 technologies to scale truly, they must be accessible, frictionless, and drive real value. The UtopiaVR metaverse platform can be accessed from any smartphone, tablet, or PC anywhere in the world without needing an expensive headset or additional device. And by building on the Chat GPT powered AI Avatar technology Utopia was already working on, we can build complete and compelling metaverse experiences for films, music, and education that drive real revenue.”

Regarded as the next iteration of the internet or Web3, the metaverse is where the physical and digital worlds come together in environments like UtopiaVR and others. The global metaverse was valued at over $65 Billion in 2022 and is expected to surge to over $900 Billion by 2030. The media and entertainment vertical is expected to reach more than $25 Billion in 2023, fueled by a rise in virtual concerts and events being carried out in the metaverse. AI-powered avatars are also expected to play a major role in the entertainment side of the metaverse as the technology evolves, specifically in content creation, security, digital Identity, and personalization.

Integrations Management improves integration reliability and automates issue detection, saving customers 4 hours per support ticket

Merge, a Product Integrations Platform, today announced the launch of Integrations Management, a suite of features that provides full control and visibility over customer-facing, B2B integrations. Maintaining integrations is time consuming for SaaS companies, more so than even the initial build of the integration. With Integrations Management SaaS companies can view all of the API-based integrations their customers have set up and troubleshoot any potential customer setup error.

Integrations Management includes a suite of features to ensure reliable and quality integrations. Support teams view the live status of integration data syncs, with detail down to specific data fields. Engineering teams also have access to comprehensive Logs, providing visibility into every single API request in an easy-to-query interface. Integrations Management includes Automated Issue Detection flagging via UI and API to resolve customer set-up errors such as outdated API keys or permission issues before they become a larger problem. The suite of tools also includes Scopes to control and customize what data is shared by each customer's integration, adhering to their data privacy preferences.

Merge Co-Founder and CEO, Shensi Ding, commented, "It's significantly harder and more time-consuming to maintain customer integrations than to build them. That's why we built Integrations Management. It eliminates the need to build any in-house tooling or consider separate third party monitoring platforms. Merge is the only Product Integrations Platform that comes with this entire suite of features."

"Integrations Management provides a seamless experience whenever our customers set up an integration," notes Daniel Marashlian, Co-Founder and CTO of Drata. "Combining the power of the Merge Dashboard and automatic alerts, it now takes my team an hour or less instead of five hours to identify potential data issues, reducing that time spent by 80% and saving us on operational costs."

Gil Feig, Merge's Co-Founder and CTO, personally experienced the challenges of maintaining customer integrations, "After building an integration, we would start seeing issues come up with the previous ones we'd built. When starting Merge, I wanted to make sure Integrations Management was a key part of our product. We also did a lot of customer research and heard similar stories about the difficulties of what happens after building an integration."

PagerDuty receives highest possible score in adoption criterion and “goes beyond alerting to automate processes and workflows that accelerate resolutions” according to report

PagerDuty, Inc. , a global leader in digital operations management, today announced Forrester Research, Inc. named PagerDuty a Leader in The Forrester Wave™: Process-Centric AI For IT Operations (AIOps), Q2 2023 report. PagerDuty AIOps is a solution that ingests and normalizes events from any source, and extracts signal from the noise to provide powerful context and noise reduction at scale. PagerDuty AIOps is part of the PagerDuty Operations Cloud℠, an AI-powered platform to help enterprise companies cross the modern operations chasm.

In Forrester’s evaluation, PagerDuty received the highest score possible in the following criteria:

• Current Offering:
  • Service Map Maintenance
  • Automation and Remediation
  • Prediction and Probability
  • Dashboard and reporting capabilities
  • Incident/Service Disrupt Detection + Mitigation
  • Intelligent and Suggestive Alerting
  • Event Noise Reduction
  • ​Infrastructure and Operations Management
  • Data Optimization
• Strategy:
  • Roadmap
  • Adoption

As the Forrester report states, “PagerDuty goes beyond alerting to automate processes and workflows that accelerate resolutions… Normalizing event data and enriching it with remediation-specific data powers automation workflows throughout the PagerDuty platform. PagerDuty mobilizes teams during an incident by automatically adding chat-driven operations (ChatOps) channels, setting up conference bridges, and sending status updates.” The report also states, “Reference customers praised PagerDuty’s event noise reduction with one calling its Event Intelligence ‘very powerful.’ PagerDuty is a good fit for enterprises with diverse technologies that will remain in place or must integrate into a common platform that can drive automation and eliminate low-value work.”

PagerDuty AIOps expands on the company’s long history of AI-powered innovation to help central IT and infrastructure customers identify incidents that matter, build situational awareness for more effective triage, and automate repetitive work. PagerDuty AIOps works out of the box, meaning no long implementations or heavy ongoing maintenance and a quicker time to value; in fact, customers are realizing best-in-class results (including a 400+% ROI). The PagerDuty AIOps solution, which leverages the company’s foundational data model, includes global event orchestration to leverage end-to-end event-driven automation and trigger self-healing actions.

The PagerDuty Operations Cloud has rapidly expanded from incident response to also include AIOps, process automation, and customer service operations, where AI is leveraged across all of those products and services. PagerDuty is focused on continually delivering solutions that help teams scale their people with AI and automation to deliver a better customer experience.

The advent of AI and Generative AI represents a tremendous opportunity for customers to unlock the full potential of the PagerDuty Operations Cloud. With Generative AI, the pace of software development will accelerate, and more software means greater complexity which makes DevOps more important than ever. Customers are looking to PagerDuty to unlock new use cases for AI and Generative AI across the Operations Cloud which will increase efficiency, improve team productivity, and delight users.

“Today, nearly every conversation starts with AI. Customers are looking at how they can maximize the benefits of AIOps since they are under pressure to drive efficiency and reduce costs in a competitive environment,” said Sean Scott, Chief Product Development Officer at PagerDuty. “We believe PagerDuty receiving the highest possible score in the roadmap criterion in Forrester's Process-Centric AIOps Wave reinforces our focus on delivering the next generation of features for customers that will help them unlock more value across the PagerDuty Operations Cloud.”

NowVertical Group Inc. TSX-V: NOW OTCQB: NOWVF (the “Company”), the vertical intelligence (VI) software and solutions company, is pleased to announce the launch of a new program in partnership with Microsoft to provide early integration to Azure OpenAI’s capabilities through NOW’s SMART HUB. Integrating NOW's secure language-based, compute platform immediately enables businesses to extract valuable insights and derive meaning from unstructured textual data across highly customized use cases securely without needing external data transfers.

AI integration via SMART HUB integrates Azure OpenAI’s models into NOW’s existing data and compute environment. This exciting new pilot builds on NOW’s well-established relationship with Microsoft and will allow customers to take advantage of the powerful GPT-4 model formulated by OpenAI.

“We’re delighted to announce this opportunity to our customers,” says NOW CEO Sasha Grujicic. “Access to Azure OpenAI’s powerful large-language model through our SMART HUB platform will allow our customers to gain a comprehensive understanding of their data while adding the capabilities of one of the most formidable generative AI models built. Not only is it a game changer in many respects, but it also meets a very high bar set by our customers to provide industry-tailored solutions securely on a customer data-ready platform.”

Azure OpenAI is not publicly available and is granted to enterprise partners, like NOW, and its customers at Microsoft's discretion. This gives NOW an early mover opportunity to offer customers one of the most advanced generative AI models as part of its SMART HUB solution. This program will be offered to a limited number of NOW customers and will be served on a priority basis.

“We are proud to work with Microsoft on this project to leverage new AI capabilities. We believe this is a great way to ensure that our customers can realize their goals and objectives faster, more efficiently, and most importantly, in a secure way,” continued Mr. Grujicic.

• Partnership reiterates Novobanco’s commitment to delivering a market leading and seamless experience for the consumer

• Novobanco will implement Feedzai’s market-leading Risk-Ops platform to optimise user experience while adding enhanced protection to its customers against financial crime

Feedzai, the world’s first RiskOps platform for financial risk management, has partnered with Portuguese bank Novo Banco S.A. (Novobanco) to further enhance the bank’s customer experience, improve its digital journey and provide best in class fraud protection.

Novobanco is a domestic Portuguese universal bank that provides the full spectrum of financial products to both the corporate and retail segments. Novobanco has 1.5 million clients and €43.8bn of assets, being the 4th largest bank in its domestic market with a market share of 9.6%. Its customer-centricity culture is set to continuously enhance the experience of its clients, offering them an omnichannel experience, based on transparent, simple and safe products and services.

This ongoing programme of investment will see Novobanco partner with Feedzai to implement its market leading Digital Trust (DT) and Transaction Fraud for Banking (TFB) solutions. The two solutions work together to provide a deeper analysis of customer biometrics and behaviour, network, device and threat data in real-time to better identify legitimate customers and improve fraud blocking before it happens. Feedzai’s human-centered AI will also help Novobanco apply fair treatment across its customer portfolio by proactively addressing customer bias and improving their overall experience.

As a result, Novobanco will be able to optimise its solutions to all customers in order to improve overall trust, satisfaction and engagement levels.

Nuno Pires, Global Head of Sales at Feedzai said, “We’re proud that Novobanco has selected Feedzai as a trusted partner. The Digital Trust and Transaction Fraud for Banking solutions which are part of our RiskOps platform will empower Novobanco to further enhance its fantastic service whilst providing the highest level of financial security for its customers.”

Duarte Pupo Correia, EVP, Head of Digital Channels at Novo Banco said, “As a customer centric Bank, at Novobanco we are committed to continuously improving and providing the most intuitive, appealing and secure experience for all our customers. As we continue to invest in our digital ecosystem, implementing Feedzai’s best-in-class solutions will ensure we can raise the bar to a higher level.”

Edison Interactive, a leading content management system for connected devices, is thrilled to announce the addition of two accomplished professionals, Jeremy Straight and Allen Dove, to its team. Their expertise in Big Data and Adtech will enhance the company's SaaS CMS platform, Launchpad, and fuel its mission to revolutionize digital experiences. 

Jeremy Straight, an industry veteran, joins Edison Interactive as the new SVP, Sales and Marketing. With over 15 years of experience in the advertising technology landscape with executive leadership roles at SpotX and Innovid, Jeremy brings unparalleled knowledge and insight to Edison's sales and marketing teams. He has a proven ability to identify monetization opportunities and build go to market strategies, making him a valuable asset in driving the growth of Launchpad's customer adoption.

Allen Dove, an esteemed technologist with a deep understanding of big data and scaling platforms, will be joining the Board of Advisors at Edison Interactive. Dove's extensive experience in building scalable data platforms and leading data-driven initiatives aligns perfectly with the company's vision. His expertise will be instrumental in leveraging Launchpad's capabilities to empower customers in unlocking new revenue streams through custom screen experiences. Dove joins the Edison team from Magnite, where he served as CTO.

Edison Interactive's Launchpad CMS platform has witnessed remarkable growth, serving as the foundation for captivating digital experiences across various industries. The SaaS platform enables customers to effortlessly build and deploy customized screen experiences, creating immersive journeys that captivate audiences and drive engagement.

With the addition of Jeremy and Allen, Edison Interactive is fortifying its ad tech talent and industry expertise to match the growing demand for Launchpad's capabilities. The company recognizes the immense potential for monetization that lies within the ad tech component of Launchpad across verticals such as hospitality, healthcare, entertainment, sports, news and finance. By harnessing the power of cutting-edge advertising technology, Edison Interactive empowers its customers to maximize their revenue and deliver truly impactful digital experiences.

"We are thrilled to have Jeremy Straight and Allen Dove join the Edison Interactive team," expressed Jeremy Ostermiller, CEO at Edison Interactive. "Their deep-seated expertise in ad tech and data analytics is set to be a catalyst for Launchpad's advancement. We remain steadfast in equipping our clients with cutting-edge tools and strategies to realize the full potential of their digital experiences."

MVP Index, the leading sponsorship measurement and valuation platform, today announced a $20 million Series B capital raise to accelerate the growth of its best-in-class product suite. Verance Capital, a prominent New York-based growth investment firm focused on sports, media, and live entertainment, led the round, demonstrating confidence in MVP's vision, capabilities, and growth potential. MVP will utilize the capital raised to fuel the company's expansion plans, accelerate product innovation, and strengthen its sales and marketing efforts.

With global brands spending more than $100 billion annually on rights, entitlements, media-visible signage, and branded content, the industry is becoming increasingly aware of the measurement gap preventing data-driven decision-making from playing the lead role in the partnership management process. MVP has established itself as a trusted currency for the world's largest brands, agencies, leagues, properties, and rights holders, effectively becoming a clearinghouse to validate branded asset performance using a fully transparent valuation methodology.

"Audiences today have more control than ever before over the content they consume, and you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who wants more advertising inserted into that experience. As traditional ad vehicles continue to decrease in effectiveness, all roads in the quest for consistent, large-scale, attentive audiences lead to sports where the most impactful inventory isn't adjacent to the game, it's integrated into the game, which is exactly what we're built to measure," said Brian Foley, MVP's Chief Executive Officer. "We are thrilled to add an experienced industry partner in Verance. Their investment not only acknowledges the remarkable work our team has accomplished but also validates our strategic approach to this market, and we look forward to their collaboration as we embark on the next chapter of our story."

MVP has experienced rapid growth and achieved several significant milestones over the past three years. The company's technology and methodology have gained widespread recognition for accurately measuring and valuing sponsored assets across broadcast, streaming, social media, audio, and experiential activations. In 2022, the company developed, launched, and patented its own computer vision technology, which represents the only solution in the market that is purpose-built to track and measure at the asset level. This powerful new approach allows MVP to deliver the most accurate and comprehensive sponsorship valuations to an industry that has failed to evolve beyond substandard systems that solely rely on antiquated logo-detection technology.

Verance's investment in MVP reflects the firm's commitment to supporting innovative sports, media, and live entertainment companies that are at the forefront of their industries. "Live sports represent a growing, attractive market for brand advertising dollars, and MVP's technology brings a transparent, accurate, and cutting-edge system of measurement to the business of sports and entertainment," said Jeremy Hoffman, Principal at Verance Capital. "We believe MVP's computer vision software solutions will continue to support leading Fortune 500 brands, sports properties, and agencies in their mission to transform the industry."

Verance joins Align Capital, MVP's longstanding partner, and a roster of existing investors that includes current and former professional athletes, ownership groups and front office executives.

Auddia Engineers Have Successfully Combined Natural Language Processing and the Company’s AI Audio-classification Algorithm to Create a New AI Model

The New Model can be Applied to Podcasts to Deliver Ad-free Listening in Exchange for a Micropayment Shared With Creators

Auddia Inc. NASDAQ:AUUD NASDAQ:AUUDW "Auddia" or the "Company", developer of a proprietary AI platform for audio and innovative technologies for podcasts that is reinventing how consumers engage with audio, announced today that it has successfully combined its AI algorithm with natural language processing in a new audio classification model that can be applied to podcasts to deliver ad-free listening.

Auddia launched its faidr audio Superapp in February of 2022 and recently released faidr 3.0, which adds podcasts and an exclusive content offering branded as faidrRadio.  The app utilizes Auddia’s proprietary AI-based audio-classification algorithm to deliver ad-free AM/FM listening. The new AI model, when it is fully rolled out, is expected to be added to faidr to deliver ad-free podcasts.

“We’ve been conducting basic research with natural language processing and exploring how NLP can be combined with our core AI technology for audio content analysis,” said Michael Lawless, CEO of Auddia. “In our current development phase, the ability to deliver ad-free podcasts is a clear application and can be executed within the faidr app, as a SaaS offering to podcast networks, or even an integrated solution for other podcasting apps.”

The Company is considering the applications of its new ad-free podcast model and will announce plans for its launch later this year.